Fast240Z

My brother was in town for the week, and he borrowed my father's station wagon to go see his friends while in town. He went back today, and needed someone to drive him to the airport, so I rode with him so he could catch his flight at 12:30am this morning. He's late, so he's pushing the station wagon pretty fast and hard, but the car seems to be driving fine. When we pull up to the terminal, the check oil light (it has a digital dash, so it throws full word codes if anything is wrong) is flashing intermittently, like a loose connection. For good measure, I get out while my brother is unloading his stuff, and check the oil. The oil looks a little low, more could be added, but was enough to get me back and to a gas station for more oil. I park the car, and I notice it's running a little rough, but I'm not too worried. I see him off, and I start driving back. About 20 miles from my house, the engine starts knocking VERY bad, so I put it into neutral, trying to figure out what it was. The sound goes away, but the engine dies almost instantly. I let the car coast on the freeway and onto an offramp, where I use the force of the car coasting to pull into a gas station. I start the car up again to see what the issue might be, and now it sounds like bolts rattling around inside of a cast iron frying pan. Not knowing what to do, I did the only thing I could do, and that was to call my father. I had alerted him that I thought the car was running weird, but I was going to try to drive home, and he told me not to worry too much about it. So, I called him, and he drove down to where I was, and listened to the engine. The knocking got progressively worse at increased RPM's, and was still knocking when we added oil. He left, and I had the vehicle towed home. I'm thinking the problem is that the motor has been starved of oil (mind you, the CEL for oil was not on, except for when it looked like a loose connection, but the car was not showing any CEL codes) and it spun/threw a rod/bearing. What do you guys think? It's a '93 Mercury Sable wagon, 3.6L V6, if that helps. I don't think my father is pissed at me, but I just want to be able to give him some answers if he starts yelling at me. If he truly was pissed, I think he'd have said so by now.

emo236

sounds like rod knock to me. Probably from a spun bearing...could be from worse things though.

Fast240Z

yeah, I'm just glad the motor didn't freeze like my Z motor did. I'm probably going to take a look around at the local PNP and see if they have any mercury engines out there, and pull one that looks like a potential running vehicle. I don't know the extent of the damage to the wagon's engine, but I'm thinking a spun bearing as well.